Glad you could join us here! Congratulations on getting your chicken adventures started
Free ranging can be great for keeping your birds entertained, mine love to be out and about. In general wrecking my garden! It can come with pit falls, mainly predators. Do you have any in your area? They are always something to consider when letting your birds out. Here is a good read on free ranging ~ https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/deciding-to-free-range-your-flock
Hope you find it helpful.

I free range my flock, and whilst i do suffer the rare loss now and again, i feel its worth it. You may also wish to check out the "predators and pests" forum to see what people do to deter the likely list of critters that you have in your area.

Nice to meet you Jerry, Welcome to Backyard chickens. Some folks free range, other do not. If you are in a high predator area I would suggest keeping them in a safe, secure, enclosed run with top. If you can accept loses to predators (hopefully not often) you can free range them. Chickens can be content with either life style.

Yes, we have predators of most kinds, except wolves. the coop and run is pretty safe, I think. We also have a great Pyrenees to discourage them, But she does not tend to stay out at night. Perhaps daytime hawks would be our biggest threat?

So, in the daytime we hope to let them roam. Do we need to clip their wings? Will they not come in at night? we have a light in the coop till 10 pm to encourage them to come in.

Are they fully grown I have a few that are a few months old and they go in just fine. And I wouldn't clip there wings if you are going to let them out cause then if something is after them they can't fly. So I wouldn't clip wings. And as long as you have a light on they shouldn go in